“We all assume that if we like something, the rest of the world is going to like it too — and when we assume that, we’re usually mistaken. That’s the conclusion of the wonderfully named paper “What’s Not to Like: Preference Asymmetry in the False Consensus Effect,” by Andrew D. Gershoff, Ashesh Mukherjee, and Anirban Mukhopadhyay, in the coming June 2008 Journal of Consumer Research. A good press release is here. . . .” Read more . . .

“Following a very shallow upside-down “U” curve, American find they happier as they age, peaking in their late fifties and finally declining in their late seventies. However, specific cohorts were found to be less likely to enjoy the the benefits of maturity. Notably, “baby boomers” experienced less happiness, which may be caused by the formative experience of growing up during a high population era. Increased competition in school and the labor market may have had a lasting impact on this group.” Read more . .

“The traditional view was that people would choose not to enter such a machine and that this fact showed that people care not only about having pleasant experiences but also about being in touch with reality. The experimental philosopher Felipe De Brigard has now run an interesting series of studies challenging this traditional conclusion. He suggests that people’s unwillingness to enter the experience machine might be due not so much to an interest in staying in touch with reality as to a phenomenon called the status quo bias. ” Read more . . .

“The idea that liberals and conservatives have some different basic values gains support from recent psychological research. For example, in a recent issue of Science, psychologist Jonathan Haidt reports that conservatives are deeply concerned about factors that fall outside of liberal morality. For liberals, morality is pretty much about harm and justice. To decide whether a policy is wrong, they want to know whether any one will be hurt by it and whether it will be fair to all those affected. Conservative care about harm and justice too, but they also care about three things that liberals tend to ignore: purity, respect for authority, and loyalty to the ingroup. ” Read more . . .

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